How many of us want to be fortnight teachers, unwilling to be students first and thus due to our own folly we lead many downhill if not astray, we discourage in the long run when our job is to encourage and uplift. A good student is one who is tested and tried often along his journey to becoming a well qualified representative of whatever he is training in. He knows well his strenghts and shortcomings he does not deny his failures but works on them that they may be overcome. Through all this training he becomes a sensitive, compassionate and wise teacher, he is able to deal with a vast expanse of things. His students respect him, look up to him and idealise him because he understands them, their problems and difficulties and is also able to provide them with much insight at how to overcome these hurdles, because he has been through it all himself. The world is in desperate need of such people. Today the world lacks inspiration, the inspiration to love, to care for, to be good and kind and considerate. Only someone who is inspired from deep within, whose life and actions, words and deeds are all compatible with his christian beliefs can inspire the world; the rest will come and go and have no effect. And what better inspiration than the life of Jesus himself. Come then, let us seek Him, find Him, love Him, draw from Him, follow Him and not do so alone but with a trail of people whose lives we have touched by doing what pleases Him most (loving God and neighbour)....This and only this is true christian witness. 

The greatest strength of endurance lies in true virtue! And it is obvious in the life of this saint:

(St. Gerard Majella)

When Gerard was 12, the sudden death of his father made it necessary for him to leave school and to begin to work. His mother apprenticed him to a tailor so that he could follow the trade of his father. His employer took a strange dislike to him and often showered him with blows and curses. Gerard accepted the persecution as being permitted by God for his spiritual good. Once he was seen to smile even while he was being beaten, and when asked about this, he said: "I was smiling because I saw the hand of God striking me." After his apprenticeship as a tailor, Gerard served for some time as a houseboy for the Bishop of Lacedonia, who was recuperating in Muro. Again he manifested the virtue of patience by silently bearing the irascible temper of this otherwise worthy man. During this time one of his early miracles took place. One day he accidentally dropped the key of the house in the well. With saintly simplicity he lowered a small statue of the Infant Jesus into the well. To the amazement of the onlookers, when Gerard raised the statue the lost key was held in its hand.

Read more: http://www.rc.net/redempt.au/majellal.htm

Prayer:

My God, I am such a complainer in times of trial. Do forgive me. Give me the kind of piety that you blessed your saints with. Give me the most sweet virtue of patience, for I lack it a great deal. Let me be inspired by the life of the saints and let me have the courage and the deep desire to imitate them as I struggle even to imitate Christ my dear Lord. Amen.

Ps:Personally I always feel double determined to cling closer to Jesus and to follow in His footsteps when I reflect on the lives of the saints. I therefore reccomend that anyone who aims at being close to God or to loving Him deeply should read regularly the lives of the saints.